Tag Archives: local history

Public Librarians Partner with Internet Archive to Preserve Local Digital Heritage

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Since 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program has been empowering public libraries and similar organizations to preserve and provide access to the unique culture and digital heritage of their communities. Members of the program receive Internet Archive’s Archive-It web archiving service and Vault digital preservation service, coordinate on funded digitization projects to bring local history collections online, and engage in training, collaboration, and professional development opportunities. The program started with 26 public libraries and has since expanded to over 270 members from across 46 US states, 7 Canadian provinces, and a growing number from outside of North America.

Collectively, these members have preserved tens of thousands of websites totaling over 200 terabytes of data. From local news and politics to arts and culture and neighborhood blogs, these websites provide evidence of how history is unfolding in local communities. As this evidence has increasingly moved online, it has become crucial for community-focused cultural heritage organizations to ensure they have the proper training and tools for preserving and providing access to web-based content. 

“Local history is all about creating meaning in people’s lives by providing a context for understanding how every resident fits into the continuum that is the history of our town. To fulfill this promise, I am working to diversify our contemporary holdings so that they more accurately represent our town’s current character and demographics. But I am continually thwarted by format,” said Anthony Vaver of Westborough Public Library in Massachusetts. “I can ask organizations to donate or scan any print materials that document their history, but because their activity is mostly web-based, the print records may not even be the most important for that organization. The Community Webs program helps us collect meaningful materials across all formats.” 

Many Community Webs members have launched web archiving initiatives at their libraries as a result of the changing local news landscape. As communities have seen their newspapers close, merge, or move to online-only formats, libraries have needed to quickly respond to ensure this irreplaceable local information is available for future users.

“With a decline in the number of print newspapers, it is imperative that local, grassroots news websites be archived,” said Desiree Funston, a librarian at Missoula Public Library in Montana, “History is happening all around us; Community Webs empowers us to preserve it for the future.” 

The Missoula Current, a local, independent online news outlet, is regularly archived by the Missoula Public Library

Funston, who also represents the Montana State Genealogical Society in the program, went on to describe how changes in local news will impact the future of genealogical research if local organizations don’t act now to preserve online content. “As the cost of publishing newspaper obituaries continues to climb, people are choosing instead to post tributes to their deceased loved ones on funeral home websites,” she said. “If the funeral home should go out of business or its website be compromised, those obituaries would be lost forever. Our partnership with Community Webs enables us to create a permanent web archive of online obituaries from across the state of Montana. This collection will have a lasting impact on genealogists who research Montana residents.”

In describing her work to preserve the community newsletter The Cedar Mill News, Liz Paulus of the Cedar Mill and Bethany Community Libraries in Oregon said, “These pages showcase a rich and varied record of community engagement and culture that would otherwise be undiscoverable. The Cedar Mill and Bethany Libraries are fortunate to have this opportunity to use the Archive-It platform to create web archives that shine a light on our communities making their way through times of change and growth, offering glimpses of the past to help inform our future.”

Hancock County Library System’s Gulf Coast Mardi Gras Collection provides access to archived web pages documenting the area’s vibrant culture and traditions

Every community has its own unique culture and Community Webs members have worked to document that culture through web archiving. Ash Parker of Hancock County Library System (HCLS) in Mississippi described preserving an important local tradition by saying, “One of HLCS’s first collecting priorities was preserving web content about one of the local traditions that makes the Mississippi Gulf Coast unique – Mardi Gras.  Hancock County is about an hour away from iconic New Orleans.  Local residents, some of whom are themselves transplants from New Orleans, are serious about their Carnival traditions. We currently capture the websites of some of our main Krewes, groups that spend most of the year planning parades and balls during Carnival season, and curate local news articles capturing the history of these treasured events.  We hope to continue preserving this local tradition for future generations through digitizing physical items and crawling born-digital content on the Internet. As this collection grows, it will be a searchable trove of information and images that captures this special side of the Gulf Coast.”

Other program members have found that reaching out to local website creators about preserving their online content has led to opportunities for collaboration and community-building. “Reaching out to site owners to inform them of our web archiving has, of course, made it possible to ensure that their web content remains accessible even when their project or ability to pay for web hosting ends, but it has also been a wonderful opportunity to start conversations and forge new connections: We see you. We believe that your work has enduring value. We are here to help it endure,” said Carissa Pfeiffer of Buncombe County Libraries in North Carolina. “So far, we have saved at least one blog and one genealogy resource which had been planned for deletion by their respective owners, alongside websites whose contents reveal, for instance, public efforts to hold local government accountable for reparations efforts.” 

The Buncombe County Libraries in North Carolina documented the aftermath of Hurricane Helene by archiving websites from grassroots relief organizations

Pfeiffer also reflected on the importance of archiving online content in the aftermath of a natural disaster. “In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina. A critical challenge was the near-total loss of regular methods of communications (internet, cell service, and power). As WiFi began to return, first to local hubs like public libraries, new web pages popped up—crowdsourced roundups of information on where to find supplies, websites for grassroots relief organizations, dedicated Helene resource pages from local governments—and then changed rapidly as new information was shared,” she said. “Thanks to Community Webs, we’ve been able to document these early examples of information-sharing during a disaster, along with news articles, blog posts, web-published reports, and so much more. As our region comes up on the one-year mark following Helene, researchers can use these resources to analyze what took place, and plan for resiliency moving forward.” 

Interested in learning more about Community Webs? Explore Community Webs collections, read the latest program news, or apply to join!

Librarians Convene to Develop Strategies for Documenting Their Community’s Digital Heritage

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A group of librarians and cultural heritage workers from across the country recently convened at two events hosted by Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Made possible in part with support from the Mellon Foundation, the meetings allowed librarians from across the country to discuss shared challenges and opportunities around documenting, preserving, and sharing the unique culture and digital heritage of their communities.

Community Webs members in Philadelphia for the 2025 Community Webs National Symposium

Launched in 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program provides public libraries and similar organizations with the tools and support they need to document local communities. Members of the program receive access to Internet Archive’s Archive-It web archiving service and Vault digital preservation service, have coordinated on funded digitization projects to bring local history collections online, and receive training, technical support, and opportunities for collaboration and professional development. There are now over 260 members of the program from across 46 states, 7 Canadian provinces, and a growing number from outside of North America.

Attendees at a workshop led by Queens Memory Project founder Natalie Milbrodt

The first of these events was held on May 9 at Internet Archive Headquarters in San Francisco and brought together a small group of public librarians interested in launching new community-focused local preservation initiatives. As local information hubs and community connectors, public libraries play a critical role in the preservation and access of local history. Over the course of the day, attendees engaged in exercises and discussions that helped them develop plans to support this work in their communities. 

Community Webs members view highlights from the Parkway Central Library Special Collections

The 2025 Community Webs National Symposium was held on June 25 and 26 in Philadelphia ahead of the American Library Association annual conference. This two-day event brought together 40 Community Webs members representing a range of cultural heritage institutions. Attendees participated in workshops on community archiving and digital preservation led by Queens Memory Project founder Natalie Milbrodt and Digital POWRR instructor Danielle Taylor, listened to presentations from Community Webs members on local projects they are leading in their communities, and toured the Parkway Central Library Special Collections. 

A main goal of the Community Webs program is to create opportunities for multi-institutional collaboration across organizations devoted to preserving local history. In-person events like these provide a forum where members can build relationships, exchange ideas, and develop skills. By supporting the work of these cultural heritage practitioners to preserve local knowledge, Internet Archive is able to move closer to achieving its mission of “Universal Access to All Knowledge.” 

Interested in learning more about Community Webs? Explore Community Webs collections, read the latest program news, or apply to join!

Community Webs Digitization Grant Reveals Stories of San Francisco’s Immigrant Communities

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The following guest post from Christina Moretta, Photo Curator and Acting San Francisco History Center Manager at San Francisco Public Library, is part of a series written by members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories.

San Francisco History Center (SFHC) of the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) is the official archive for the City and County of San Francisco. SFHC serves all library users and levels of interest, from the merely curious to those engaging in scholarly research. Because of the Center’s archival function, it also administers the archival collections of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center.

Internet Archive has supported our work to preserve and provide access to San Francisco’s history in many ways. Since 2007, Internet Archive has hosted SFPL digitized content, including local documents and city directories. In 2017, SFPL became one of the first members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. This program has provided us with the tools we need to preserve local web-based content that will be important for future researchers investigating San Francisco’s history.

In 2023, the Community Webs program was awarded a grant from the National Historical Publication and Records Commission for the “Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections” project. This grant supported the digitization of local history collections from libraries across the country, including SFPL. With this support, 23 bound volumes of a Chinese/English language newspaper East/West and 4 cartons of oral histories from the Paul Radin Papers were digitized by Internet Archive.

Cover of East/West, 1968, Vol. 2, no. 23

East/West

The East/West (Dong xi bao) newspaper was acquired the easy way – original subscription by the SFPL’s Periodical Department in the late 1960s. There are only a handful of institutions that have East/West in their holdings as microfilm only. SFHC has the complete run in paper format.

In late 1966, Gordon Lew and two Chinese newspaper colleagues, Kenneth Joe and Ken Wong, began the idea of East/West, a bilingual weekly newspaper published out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The inaugural issue was in January 1967 and the newspaper ran for over twenty-two years with the last issue in September 1989. Lew became the publisher and editor, Joe worked in the Chinese section, and Wong was the principal writer in the English section. East/West was an important community newspaper, with extensive coverage of local Chinatown news, social activities, the work of Chinese American political figures, and international developments such as the normalization of China ties.

East/West was published in English and Chinese, and for many years, the two sections had approximately the same number of pages. The editorial and perhaps the main news article in the English section would be translated into Chinese. The Chinese section tended to focus more on culture, arts, and history, and it often reprinted articles from other sources. Advertisements filled both sections from the very beginning for local businesses and services. Most were community ads as the newspaper served non-profit organizations that arose in the wake of the Chinese American and Asian American empowerment movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Miss Chinatown, East/West, 1977, Vol. 11, no. 9, p. 14

Researchers and scholars of 20th-century Chinese American communities in the United States will appreciate the online availability of this unique resource. Many important issues cropped up in Chinese America and Asian America starting in the late 1960s and these can be found in East/West from the community perspective. By being a bilingual publication, the newspaper captured and shared the voice of the community. In addition, San Francisco Chinese Americans had limited political power in the 1960s. East/West focused on emerging Chinese American political figures and urged the community to increase its voting and general political participation.

Browse East/West on archive.org

Paul Radin Papers

In 2003, the Paul Radin Papers were donated to the SFHC by Professor Luis S. Kemnitzer of San Francisco State University on behalf of Calvin Fast Wolf and Mary Sacharoff-Fast Wolf. Mary Wolf was a would-be biographer of Radin who had acquired original papers from her friend and Radin’s widow, Doris Woodward Radin, as well as colleagues.

Dr. Paul Radin (1883-1959) is considered to be one of the formative influences in contemporary anthropology and ethnography in the United States and Europe. The bulk of the Paul Radin Papers consists of surveys from Radin’s supervision of over 200 workers who interviewed ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay Area for the State Emergency Relief Administration of California (SERA) over a period of nine months in 1934-1935. Known as SERA project 2-F2-98 (3-F2-145), its abstract was published in 1935 as The Survey of San Francisco’s Minorities: Its Purpose and Results. The stated purpose was a cultural survey to find employment for “white collar” unemployed workers on temporary relief. Radin’s focus was “to study the steps in the adjustment and assimilation of minority groups in San Francisco and Alameda counties.” Bypassing a typical questionnaire method, Radin instead had the amateur interviewers record anything and everything which the interviewees wished to say. The results appear in a narrative format—sometimes in the form of poetry and short stories—and encompass all manner of immigrant experiences. Survey materials include typed and handwritten interviews and research on ethnic groups. Some interviewers identify themselves, and their report appears in their own hand.

Jon Y. Lee’s notes, Paul Radin Papers

A portion of the Paul Radin Papers includes SERA worker Jon Y. Lee’s papers including material for The Golden Mountain. Lee was the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oakland, California. Radin hired Lee as a fieldworker to collect Chinatown traditions in Oakland, California. Today, Lee is recognized as the first Asian American to work professionally as a folklorist.

With this collection online, international scholars can now easily access narratives about the immigrant experience from their country/region to assist with their diaspora studies. The typed descriptions allow for OCR discovery and for one to gather more information on the San Francisco immigrant experience in the 1910s and 1920s.

Mrs. R narrative, Paul Radin Papers

Browse the Paul Radin Papers on archive.org

Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.

Columbus Neighborhood Newspapers Showcase the City’s Diverse Communities

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The following guest post from Aaron O’Donovan (aodonovan@columbuslibrary.org), Columbus Metropolitan Library Special Collections Manager, is part of a series written by members of the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories and underrepresented voices. 

As a local history and genealogy department in a public library, our materials run the gamut from books from the 1700s about the creation of our country to yearbooks of local high schools that patrons like to peruse for nostalgia’s sake. In addition to our approximately 90,000 reference books, our archives room holds approximately 2,500 linear feet of photographic material, records, and manuscript material. We are constantly seeking new opportunities to expand access to our collections for our patrons, and when the opportunity arose to digitize materials as part of the Community Webs program, I knew what I wanted to digitize first: local neighborhood newspapers of Columbus.  

Ohio Columbian, February 24, 1853

We joined the Community Webs program in 2017 to archive important cultural and local government websites of Columbus, Ohio. The catalyst for the project was the belief that we had done a good job of telling the story of Columbus in its first 150 years, but we were missing telling the story of the evolution of the city of the more recent past, as well as failing to record the present. With the object of capturing more recent changes to our city, we focused on archiving our city government website, as well as archiving social service websites, especially those helping new immigrants in our city. Because of the Community Webs program, we were able to take a snapshot of the diverse populations that were making their homes in Columbus, and the medium of web archiving was the only way we were able to tell the stories of these new immigrant communities including the Somalian, Nepalese, Bhutanese, and Mexican populations. To further this focus on migration patterns into Columbus, we felt it was important to make our neighborhood newspapers that we had on microfilm accessible because the neighborhood newspapers featured stories and obituaries on immigrant populations who came to Columbus in the mid-19th century and early 20th century.

The newspapers had been preserved on microfilm for decades, but we were never able to digitize them due the time commitment involved for a project that size. During my time in the local history field in Columbus, it has become clear to me that our library patrons crave hyper-local history material that personally connects their stories to the place they live. While general local history topics about Columbus are popular, nothing is more popular in our library than content generated from Columbus neighborhoods. To finally get an opportunity to digitize neighborhood newspapers and make them accessible to our patrons was one that I could not pass up.

Columbus Call and Post, May 3, 1975

The most important newspaper for the library to digitize was the Columbus Call and Post, a historic Black newspaper that served Columbus from 1962-2007. For years patrons have asked us if the newspaper was digitized, but unfortunately all the library had was microfilm starting in 1972, which was very difficult to browse and ultimately did not serve our patron’s needs for accessibility. Because the Internet Archive performed optical character recognition (OCR) on the text of the newspapers, researchers can now use keyword searching to find an address, a business name, or search for personal names to find news stories that mention the people and places that they hold in their memory.

Digitizing the microfilm of the Call and Post also complemented another project we began several years ago when we partnered with the King Arts Complex to digitize the photograph archive of the iconic newspaper, which was donated to the organization in the mid-1990s. Many of the photographs in the collection have little to no information attached to them (information written on the back of the photographic prints, the name of the photographer, etc.). Digitization of the Call and Post provided additional information to match and apply to the photographs in the archive, adding an enhanced level of searchability and accessibility to this collection. The collections work together to preserve Black history in a way that was not possible before because much of the content from the Call and Post was unique and rare. Being able to bring this newspaper back into the public consciousness has been a thrilling experience for us.

Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in Columbus, Columbus Call and Post Photograph Collection

As the project continued to take shape, we felt it was important to represent Columbus neighborhoods geographically, which also enabled us to represent different economic and ethnically diverse communities throughout Columbus history. Our most accessed newspaper thus far has been the Hilltop Record, a title which focused on a local neighborhood with strong Appalachian ties and has a long history of covering the issues of working-class citizens on the westside of Columbus. Other digitized community newspapers include :

· The Eastern Spectator and Eastern Review offers perspectives from the city’s Jewish community.

· The Southside Booster and Southside Leader, shares the industrial and union history of Columbus.

· The Linden NE News showcases stories from north Columbus, an area that has experienced several demographic shifts throughout its 100 years of history.

Hilltop Record, November 8, 1928

The rarest newspapers digitized for this project were also some of the oldest newspapers that were preserved on microfilm in our collection. Among those titles are the Ohio Columbian (1853-1856), an anti-slavery newspaper that reported on Underground Railroad activities as they were happening in Ohio and surrounding states. It has potential for illuminating our understanding and knowledge of individuals that were involved in assisting enslaved people seeking freedom in the 1850s.  Other newspapers with great research potential include early (and shorter) runs of Black newspapers that have not been digitized before this project including The Columbus Recorder (1927), The Columbus Voice (1929), which was edited by Florence W. Oakfield, and The Ohio Torch (1928-1930), the longest running newspaper for the Black community during the 1920s. We are excited to report that researchers are already using these resources to better understand Columbus history more objectively and completely.

With this support from the Internet Archive and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we have been able to help our local users find information that was not available elsewhere. Recently, we had a researcher request an obituary from June of 1964 when our two major newspapers were on strike. Thankfully, the South Side Spectator had been digitized and was available through the Internet Archive. Our librarian was able to locate the obituary that was only available in that newspaper. We also got this enthusiastic email from a regular library patron after we informed them that we had digitized the Hilltop Record and it was now keyword searchable on the Internet Archive: “OH MY GOSH! ARE YOU SERIOUS!?! THAT’S FANTASTIC! Have I told you lately how much I love you guys? You rock my world! Thank you so much for everything you do. I am so grateful for everyone in Local History & Genealogy.”

Moreover, the librarians are using the digitized newspapers in regular programming, furthering our promotion of these new digitized collections. Every month the library hosts a virtual Black Heritage Collection Spotlight on a notable person or topic from Black history in Columbus. The images and news articles from the digitized Call and Post are used frequently for the program, and we look forward to learning about more ways the digitized newspapers are used in local research to highlight and deepen our community’s connections to Columbus’ past. 

Browse the Columbus Neighborhood Newspapers Collection on archive.org.

The Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.

Illuminating the Stories of Brooklynites Through Digitized Directories

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The following guest post from Dee Bowers (they/them), Archives Manager at the Brooklyn Public Library Center for Brooklyn History, is part of a series written by members of the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories and underrepresented voices.

Some say as many as one in seven Americans have family roots in Brooklyn, and I expect the newly digitized Brooklyn city directories now available through the Internet Archive will get heavy use from genealogists, historians, authors, journalists, students, and even artists to trace connections to the diverse and ever-changing borough.

Black and white two-page spread of directory title page including map of Brooklyn.
Title page, Spooner’s Brooklyn Directory 1822. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.

What is now the Center for Brooklyn History first joined the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program in 2017 as part of the original cohort. This program gave us the tools and training we needed to save over 2TB of web-based Brooklyn history content, including over 1,000 individual URLs. We also host our digitized high school newspapers and audiovisual material on the Internet Archive.

In addition to helping us preserve this web-based content, Community Webs has now also made it possible to increase access to our physical collections through digitization. As part of the Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections project, made possible by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we were able to partner with the Internet Archive to digitize 236 microfiche sheets of Brooklyn city directories. 

Microfiche sheet from the Brooklyn city directories, 1822. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.

These directories show the movement, growth, and changing nature of immigrant populations in Brooklyn in the early to mid 19th century and help document the immigrant experience by providing data on the residency and, in some cases, ethnicities of Brooklynites over time. We knew that expanding digital access would be extremely useful to the many researchers who use our online resources, especially since our number one research topic is genealogy. The project is also directly in line with our mission:

“Democratize access to Brooklyn’s history and be dedicated to expanding and diversifying representation of the history of the borough by unifying resources and expertise, and broadening reach and impact.“

By increasing the visibility of these collections through digitization and freely available public access, researchers and historians will have a richer, more accessible view into the diversity of American history. The history of Brooklyn is extraordinarily diverse but, like many archives, our collections don’t always tell the fullness of those stories. By expanding access to our city directories, we provide insight into earlier residents of Brooklyn and enable diverse communities to trace their Brooklyn roots to a greater degree.

Screenshot of digitized directory page in Internet Archive viewer.
Screenshot of the early Brooklyn directories in the Internet Archive.

Here’s an example of how the directories look in the Internet Archive. In this screenshot above, they include content outside of just directory listings. In this case, there’s a chronological listing of “memoranda” – notable moments in Brooklyn history – including “June 11, 1812 – News received in Brooklyn, of the declaration of war between the United States and Great Britain.”

One example of research that can be conducted with these directories is finding out more about early Black Brooklynites. Slavery was abolished in New York State in 1827, so the earliest days of post-enslavement Brooklyn are represented in the digitized directories.

Screenshot of digitized directory page in Internet Archive viewer with the purple highlighted surname “Hodges.”
Screenshot of 1857 directory on the Internet Archive with the highlighted surname “Hodges.”

By searching the text of the directories using keywords, I picked out an individual to learn more about, Rev. William J. Hodges, who lived on Broadway in Brooklyn in 1857. By cross-referencing with our digitized newspapers, I was able to find out more about him and his abolitionist activism in Brooklyn and beyond. It turns out he was not born in Brooklyn, nor did he reside there very long, but he did make an impact during his time there, as he founded the Colored Political Association of Kings County (which is the modern-day borough of Brooklyn).

Black and white newspaper clipping describing a “colored indignation meeting” in which William Hodges took part.
“Local Items,” June 5 1856, Brooklyn Times Union, page 2.

If not for the digitized city directories, I doubt I ever would have learned of Rev. Hodges and his time in Brooklyn. I hope that many more stories like these will emerge once researchers start digging into these directories.

Black and white image of buildings on a tree-lined street with information about T. Reeve, architect.
Directory advertisement for T. Reeve, Architect and Builder.

The directories also contain items like this – an advertisement showing this architect and builder’s office on Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn. This part of Brooklyn looks very different now, and this insight into what it looked like pre-photography is invaluable, particularly for people conducting house, building, and neighborhood research.

The directories are linked on our Search Our Collections page. We also have a tutorial for using the digitized directories. Additionally, we have several related research guides which assist researchers in exploring various topics. These materials are in the public domain, and we hope they will be used for a broad spectrum of applications, from family research to demographic research to writing to artwork. We are grateful to Community Webs, the Internet Archive, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for making this material available and searchable online and allowing us to expand access across the borough, city, and beyond.

Browse the Brooklyn City Directories on archive.org.

The Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.

Public Libraries Meet to Advance Community Archiving

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On August 13, Community Webs members from all over the US and Canada gathered in Chicago for the 2024 Community Webs National Symposium. Launched in 2017, Internet Archive’s Community Webs program empowers public libraries and other cultural heritage organizations to document their communities. Members of the program receive access to Internet Archive’s Archive-It web archiving service and Vault digital preservation service as well as training, technical support, and opportunities for professional development.

Members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program at the Community Webs National Symposium


This event was made possible in part by support from the Mellon Foundation. Held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, this year’s symposium was an opportunity for members to learn together and connect with each other. The day was organized around two workshops designed to support the community archiving and digital preservation work happening across Community Webs member institutions.

The first workshop, “Collective Wisdom: Collaborative Learning to Support Your Community Archiving Projects,” was taught by Natalie Milbrodt, CUNY University Archivist and co-founder of the Queens Memory Project. Attendees spent time working in small groups to create definitions of “Community Archiving” and reflect on some of the shared challenges and opportunities they were experiencing when engaging in community-centered work. This workshop  emphasized the value of the collective wisdom of Community Webs members and will inform future educational opportunities. The community archives focus of this workshop also supported  the Community Webs Affiliates Program, which encourages relationship-building among public libraries and other community-focused cultural heritage and social service organizations to broaden access to archiving tools for documenting the lives of their patrons.

Attendees work together to discuss strategies for documenting their communities

In the second half of the day, Stacey Erdman and Jaime Schumacher of Digital POWRR led a “Walk the Workflow” workshop which demonstrated a step-by-step digital preservation process using a variety of free preservation tools including  Internet Archive’s Vault digital preservation system.

A main goal for the symposium was to provide an opportunity for Community Webs members to connect and learn from each other. Throughout the day, attendees discussed projects, shared ideas, described lessons learned, and brainstormed possible avenues for future collaboration.

A digital preservation workshop provided attendees with strategies for supporting long term preservation of digital collections

The following day, Community Webs members toured the Chicago Public Library Special Collections. Johanna Russ, Unit Head for Special Collections, gave a presentation about the complex, multi-year project CPL undertook to preserve and provide access to the records of the Chicago Park District. Highlights from this collection were available for attendees to view in the reading room.

That afternoon, the Archive-It Partner Meeting provided opportunities for Community Webs members and other Archive-It users to spend some time with Internet Archive staff to discuss topics such as strategies for capturing social media and making web archives more useful. 

Community Webs members view highlights from Chicago Public Library’s special collections

In-person events like this are instrumental in achieving a key goal of the program: offering opportunities for networking and professional development for Community Webs members. Internet Archive’s support for this national network of practitioners empowers their work on a local level to preserve and provide access to digital heritage sources reflecting the unique life and culture of their communities.

Interested in learning more about Community Webs? Explore Community Webs collections, read the latest program news, or apply to join!

The Internet Archive’s Community Webs Program Welcomes 60+ New Members from the US, Canada and Internationally

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Community Webs, the Internet Archive’s community history web and digital archiving program, is welcoming over 60 new members from across the US, Canada, and internationally. This new cohort is the first expansion of the Community Webs program outside of the United States and we are thrilled to be supporting the development of diverse, community-based web collections on an international scale. 

Community Webs empowers cultural heritage organizations to collaborate with their communities to build web and digital archives of primary sources documenting local history and culture, especially collections inclusive of voices typically underrepresented in traditional memory collections. The program achieves this mission by providing its members with free access to the Archive-It web archiving service, digital preservation and digitization services, and technical support and training in topics such as web archiving, community outreach, and digital preservation. The program also offers resources to support a local history archiving community of practice and to facilitate scholarly research.

New Community Webs member Karen Ng, Archivist at Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), BC, Canada, notes that the program offers a way to capture community-generated online content in a context where many of the Nation’s records are held by other institutions. “The Squamish Nation community is active in creating and documenting language, traditional knowledge, and histories. Now more than ever in the digital age, it is imperative that these stories and histories be captured and stored in accessible ways for future generations.” 

Similarly, for Maryna Chernyavska, Archivist at the Kule Folklore Centre in Edmonton, Canada, the program will allow the Centre to continue building relationships with community members and organizations. “Being able to assist local heritage organizations with web archiving will help us empower these communities to preserve their heritage based on their values and priorities, but also according to professional standards.”

The current expansion of the program was made possible in part by generous funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, which supports the growth of Community Webs to new public libraries in the US. Additional funding provided by the Internet Archive allows the program to reach cultural heritage organizations in Canada and beyond. This newest cohort brings the total number of participants in Community Webs to over 150 organizations, a ten-fold increase since the program’s inception in 2017. For a full list of new participants, see below. The program continues to add members – if your institution is interested in joining, please view our open calls for applications and please make your favorite local memory organization aware of the opportunity.

Programming for the new cohort is underway and these members are already diving into the program’s educational resources and familiarizing themselves with the technical aspects of web archiving and digital preservation. We kicked things off recently with introductory Zoom sessions, where participants met one another and shared their organizations’ missions, communities served and goals for membership in the program. Online training modules, developed by staff at the Internet Archive and the Educopia Institute, went live for new members at the beginning of September. And our new cohort joined our existing Community Webs partners at our virtual Partner Meeting on September 22nd. 

We are thrilled to see the program continuing to grow and we look forward to working with our newest cohort. A warm welcome to the following new Community Webs members!

Canada:

  • Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute
  • Age of Sail Museum and Archives
  • Ajax Public Library
  • Blue Mountains Public Library – Craigleith Heritage Depot
  • Canadian Friends Historical Association
  • Charlotte County Archives
  • City of Kawartha Lakes Public Library
  • Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County
  • Confluence Concerts | Toronto Performing Arts Archives
  • Edson and District Historical Society – Galloway Station Museum & Archives
  • Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Association
  • Ex Libris Association
  • Fishing Lake Métis Settlement Public Library
  • Frog Lake First Nations Library
  • Goulbourn Museum
  • Grimsby Public Library
  • Hamilton Public Library
  • Kule Folklore Centre
  • Maskwacis Cultural College
  • Meaford Museum
  • Milton Public Library
  • Mission Folk Music Festival
  • Nipissing Nation Kendaaswin
  • North Lanark Regional Museum
  • Northern Ontario Railroad Museum and Heritage Centre
  • Parkwood National Historic Site
  • Regina Public Library
  • Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) Archives
  • Société historique du Madawaska Inc.
  • St. Clair West Oral History Project
  • Temagami First Nation Public Library
  • The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives
  • The Historical Society of Ottawa
  • Thunder Bay Museum
  • Tk’emlups te Secwepemc

International:

  • Biblioteca Nacional Aruba
  • Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica (Taiwan)
  • Mbube Cultural Preservation Foundation (Nigeria)
  • National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS) (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago)

United States:

  • Abilene Public Library
  • Ashland City Library
  • Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
  • Charlotte County Libraries & History
  • Choctaw Cultural Center
  • Cultura Local ABI
  • DC History Center
  • Forsyth County Public Library
  • Fort Worth Public Library
  • Inuit Circumpolar Council – Alaska
  • Menominee Tribal Archives
  • Mineral Point Library Archives
  • Obama Hawaiian Africana Museum
  • Scott County Library System
  • South Sioux City Public Library
  • St. Louis Media History Foundation
  • Tacoma Public Library
  • The History Project
  • The Seattle Public Library
  • Tipp City Public Library
  • University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu
  • Wilmington Public Library District

Congrats to these new partners! We are excited to have you on board.

Community Webs joins the Digital Public Library of America

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Internet Archive’s Community Webs program is delighted to announce a partnership with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to ingest metadata from the over 700 publicly available Community Webs web archive collections into DPLA. These collections include thousands of archived websites and millions of individual web-published resources that document local history and underrepresented groups. The Internet Archive has been a DPLA content provider since 2015, primarily contributing content from our many print digitizing partnerships. Community Webs will also join DPLA as a member and we are excited for this opportunity to add hyperlocal born-digital and web collections from public libraries nationwide into DPLA’s national portal to cultural heritage collections.

The Community Webs program was launched in 2017 to provide training, infrastructure, services, and professional community cultivation for public librarians across the country for the purpose of documenting local history and community archiving, especially documenting communities and populaces traditionally excluded from the historical record. The program is in the midst of nationwide expansion and currently includes more than 100 member public libraries who are collaborating with local organizations, movements, and groups to document the lives and accomplishments of their citizens. The program continues to add new public libraries and cultural heritage organizations to support and scale their community archiving and has an open call for applications in the US, Canada, and internationally for additional public libraries and local heritage organizations to join the program. Examples of Community Webs collections include:

  • Community Webs members have created more than 30 collections documenting local responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, including COVID-19 Coronavirus East Baton Rouge Parish from East Baton Rouge Parish Library and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s “Novel Coronavirus COVID-19” collection which focuses on “the African diasporan experiences of COVID-19 including racial disparities in health outcomes and access, the impact on Black-owned businesses, and cultural production.” 
  • Community Webs members have created a number of collections documenting LGBTQ groups, events and other resources, including LGBTQIA/Hormel Resources from San Francisco Public Library and Birmingham Public Library’s “LGBTQ in Alabama” collection.
  • Members are also actively archiving materials on their local or regional culture, such as Kansas City Public Library’s Arts & Culture collection, which “documents Kansas City’s thriving arts community, including galleries, museums, nonprofits, advocacy organizations, criticism and art spaces.”
  • Many members have focused on documenting local social services or advocacy groups, such as Madison Public Library’s Racial Equity and Social Justice, Madison, WI collection of “organizations and non-profits that engage in public discourse on issues of racial equity and social justice.”

Working with a mission-aligned organization like DPLA and our shared values of collaboration, open access, and community empowerment made it an obvious fit for Community Webs member collections to also be available in DPLA. Some public libraries who are a part of the Community Webs program are also members of local or statewide DPLA content hubs, and already have digitized content available in DPLA.The partnership between DPLA and Community Webs will ensure that archived web and born-digital collections are accessible alongside similar digitized materials for seamless discovery and access for uses. Pairing Community Webs’ free archiving, infrastructure, education, and other services with DPLA’s aggregation tools, hubs networks, and its advocacy role will help expand national access and capacity for making primary sources, and a more diverse archival record, accessible to any online user,

“DPLA’s new partnership with the Community Webs program will help further our mission to provide free digital access to cultural heritage artifacts that inform a truly representative history of our nation, “ said Shaneé Yvette Murrain, director of community engagement for DPLA. “We are thrilled to be deepening our work with Internet Archive through a program so perfectly aligned with our organizations’ shared values.”

“Pairing the community web archives of 100+ public libraries and the cohort cultivation that are part of Community Webs with the national scope and professional networks native to DPLA is a perfect match. We are excited to expand access to these amazing grassroots digital collections,” said Jefferson Bailey, Director of Web Archiving & Data Services at Internet Archive.

We are excited to be partnering with DPLA to increase access to these vital community history collections and look forward to building more integrations and furthering this collaboration in the years to come.

Community Webs Seeks Applicants from the US, Canada and Around the World

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The Internet Archive is seeking applicants for its next cohort of Community Webs! We are thrilled to announce that the program is now open to additional cultural heritage organizations in the US, as well as any public library or local memory organization in Canada and internationally.

Community Webs provides infrastructure and services, training and education, and professional community cultivation for public libraries and cultural heritage organizations to document local history and the lives of their communities. Launched in the US in 2017 with kickoff funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Community Webs began expanding nationally in 2020 with generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Building on the program’s success and continued growth, Internet Archive is now supporting expansion of the program into Canada and to the international community, and is accepting applications for our next cohort kicking off in late-Summer 2021. The deadline for applications is August 2, 2021.

The program offers a unique opportunity for participating organizations to build capacity in digital collecting. Community Webs participants work alongside peer organizations and with their local communities to document the lives of their citizens, marginalized voices, and groups often absent from the historical record. All Community Webs participants receive: 

  • A guaranteed multi-year free subscription to the Archive-It web archiving service, which includes perpetual storage and access provided by the Internet Archive.
  • Access to additional Internet Archive non-profit services, such as digitization and digital preservation, either for free (as funding allows) or at or below actual cost.
  • Training and educational resources related to digital collections, web archiving, digital preservation, and other topics, as well as access to a cohort community pursuing similar work and to networking spaces, events, and knowledge sharing platforms.
  • The option to leverage program partnerships and integrations to include community web archives in other aggregators or access platforms beyond Internet Archive.

The program currently includes over 100 public libraries from across the United States. These organizations have collectively archived over 70 terabytes of web-based community heritage materials. Some highlights include:

Archived web page: Reporte Hispano, April 6, 2021. New Brunswick Free Public Library. Spanish Newspapers collection.
Archived web page: KC Friends of Alvin Ailey, January 10, 2021. Kansas City Public Library, Arts & Culture collection.

The benefits of the program are wide-ranging and impactful for both participants and their communities. As Community Webs member Makiba J. Foster of the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Broward County, Florida stated during a recent Community Webs event, Archiving the Black Diaspora, “Community Webs provided me with the training, they provided me with the cohort support, […] provided me with services, and particularly it helped to develop an expertise for me in terms of creating collections of historically significant web materials documenting our local communities.” The program “allowed me to start a project of recovery and documentation of digitally born content related to the Black experience.” More information about what Foster and other Community Webs members are up to can be found by viewing our recent program announcements.

Find out more about the program and keep up to date by visiting the Community Webs website. Apply online today and spread the word! 

Introducing 50+ New Public Library Members of the Internet Archive’s Community Webs Program

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The Internet Archive’s Community Webs Program provides training and education, infrastructure and services, and professional community cultivation for public librarians across the country to document their local history and the lives of their patrons. Following our recent announcement of the program’s national expansion, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are excited to welcome the first class of 50+ new public libraries to the program. This brings the current number of new and returning Community Webs participants to 90+ libraries from 33 states and 3 US territories. This diverse group of organizations includes multiple state libraries representing their regions, as well as a mix of large metropolitan library systems, small libraries in rural areas, and libraries like the Feleti Barstow Public Library in American Samoa. All will be working to document their communities, with a particular focus on archiving materials from traditionally underrepresented groups.

The new cohort class kicked off with virtual introductory events in mid-March, where participants met one another and shared stories about their communities and their goals for preserving and providing access to local history materials. Member libraries are currently receiving training in topics such as collection development and starting to build digital collections that reflect local diversity, events, and culture.

Program participant Kathleen Pickering, Director of the Belen Public Library and Harvey House Museum in Belen, New Mexico notes that their library “is committed to free and open-source electronic resources for our patrons, especially given the low-income status of many of our residents” and Community Webs will help further that goal. Similarly, new cohort member Aaron Ramirez of Pueblo City-County Library District (PCCLD) found Community Webs to be a great fit for existing institutional goals and initiatives. “PCCLD’s five-year strategic plan directs us to embrace local cultures, to include individuals of all skill levels and physical abilities, and to enrich established partnerships and collaborations. The groups that have not seen themselves in our archives will find through this project PCCLD’s intention and means to listen and go forward as allies and as a resource of support, rather than an institution serving only the affluent.”

Makiba J. Foster

Makiba J. Foster, Manager of The African American Research Library and Cultural Center of Broward County, Florida pointed out that “as content becomes increasingly digital, we need this opportunity to document the digital life and content of our community which includes a diverse representation of the Black Diaspora.”  Makiba was a member of the original Community Webs cohort in a previous position at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at New York Public Library, and recently presented on her work archiving the black diaspora to a group of more than 200 attendees.

The Community Webs Program is continuing to grow towards the milestone of over 150 participating libraries across the United States and will soon announce another call for applicants for a U.S. cohort starting in late summer. The program also is beginning to expand internationally, starting in Canada, exploring the addition of other types of libraries and cultural heritage organizations, and expanding its suite of training and services available to participants. Expect more news on these initiatives soon. 

Welcome to our new cohort of Community Webs libraries! The full list of new members: 

  • Alamogordo Public Library (New Mexico)
  • Amelia Island Museum of History (Florida)
  • ART | library deco (Texas)
  • Asbury Park Public Library (New Jersey)
  • Atlanta History Center (Georgia)
  • Bartholomew County Public Library (Indiana)
  • Bedford Public Library System (Virginia)
  • Belen Public Library and Harvey House Museum (New Mexico)
  • Bensenville Community Public Library (Illinois)
  • Biblioteca Municipal Aurea M. Pérez (Puerto Rico)
  • Carbondale Public Library (Illinois)
  • Cedar Mill & Bethany Community Libraries (Oregon)
  • Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (North Carolina)
  • Chicago Public Library (Illinois)
  • City Archives & Special Collections, New Orleans Public Library (Louisiana)
  • Dayton Metro Library (Ohio)
  • Elba Public Library (Alabama)
  • Essex Library Association (Connecticut)
  • Everett Public Library (Washington)
  • Feleti Barstow Public Library (American Samoa)
  • Forsyth County Public Library (North Carolina)
  • Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library (Connecticut)
  • Heritage Public Library (Virginia)
  • Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (Alabama)
  • James Blackstone Memorial Library (Connecticut)
  • Jefferson Parish Library (Louisiana)
  • Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (Virginia)
  • Laramie County Library System (Wyoming)
  • Lawrence Public Library (Massachusetts)
  • Los Angeles Public Library (California)
  • Mill Valley Public Library, Lucretia Little History Room (California)
  • Missoula Public Library (Montana)
  • Niagara Falls Public Library (New York)
  • Pueblo City-County Library District (Colorado)
  • Rochester Public Library (New York)
  • Santa Cruz Public Libraries (California)
  • South Pasadena Public Library (California)
  • State Library of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania)
  • Tangipahoa Parish Library (Louisiana)
  • The African American Research Library and Cultural Center (Florida)
  • The Ferguson Library (Connecticut)
  • Three Rivers Public Library District (Illinois)
  • Virginia Beach Public Library (Virginia)
  • Waltham Public Library (Massachusetts)
  • Watsonville Public Library (California)
  • West Virginia Library Commission (West Virginia)
  • William B Harlan Memorial Library (Kentucky)
  • Worcester Public Library (Massachusetts)
  • Your Heritage Matters (North Carolina)